The Tangibility of Time
“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives…”
Image | Jordan Benton, Pexels
A famous quote by Saint Augustine (354-430 AD) says, “The past is now no longer and the future is now not yet.”
Before the invention of the clock, daytime was marked by the sun or the moon. To measure a short period of time or how long a movement lasted, our ancestors used hourglasses or other devices.
If we had asked Socrates to define the meaning of time, he would have said, "Time is a pure human mental abstraction; as a sensation of man—it is empowering although non-existent." Time is such a philosophically difficult concept to deal with that the Athenian philosopher himself believed it should not exist.
So Saint Augustine tells us time is only now and Socrates that time is an illusion!
I hope they are wrong because all our modern existence is based on and regulated by time. I would hate to imagine that the whole of humanity is wrong and the other species of animals and plants, not having a concept of time, are right!
From the moment we are born, we race to collect that which we believe are the most precious things we need, not least of which is money. However, at what we call the end of our existence, time becomes our most important possession. Of course, only our known time expires: the universe keeps going.
A scientist would say that our time, defined as the lifespan of ourselves as biological entities, keeps going after our deaths through other living species. Religious people would then reply that our souls are born at our conception and will live forever.
My personal opinion is there are two “times”:
The first is the one which is a concept shared among all of us, that is to say, what a calendar or clock indicates—months, days, hours, minutes, seconds.
The second is the one we perceive inside our being. Inside, I can be as old I want or feel, just as I can be as beautiful or stupid as I wish. Nobody else can measure how I perceive the world around me.
Somebody told me that time is very democratic because it comes to an end for all of us. I would add to this that our internal time allows us to move even if we are standing still and to keep from aging even if we are “old.”
